Korea Journal of Buddhist Studies ISSN:1598-0642(Print) 불교학연구

When reading Sanskrit śāstra literature, scholars do not merely read the contents contained in its text. They also read the formal patterns unique to the genre of śāstra and understand its contents within the context of its formal structure. Without attention to its formal properties, a work of śāstra literature remains unintelligible to its readers. The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guideline suggests document encoding standards for humanities scholars, and the Search and Retrieval of Indic Texts (SARIT) project accommodates the TEI guideline to Sanskrit texts, especially those of śāstra. This paper examines the nature of the information that the SARIT guideline aims to encode by dividing the formality of śāstra texts into the forms of genre, manuscript, and publication. It then discusses the idea of śāstra that governs and regulates the writing patterns of traditional intellectuals. These patterns are not coded in non-textual devices such as font and line formatting. Instead, they are semantic patterns that are coded in the flow of the contents. In the final section, I observe three general patterns commonly found in the śāstra literature (the sub-categories of the genre, basic commentarial services, and the question-answer mode of discussion) and discuss the benefits of encoding that information in XML files.